Post 111.
Touch, the chill seeps through the ground
Leaves hold green past bush and tree
But deep beneath their roots sense it
Red, orange, yellow, autumn sounds,
Do they know what change will be?
For you, for me?
As a substitute teacher, I teach lots of subjects. As my neighbors aptly point out, though, I'm far too busy teaching my coursework at Penn State Altoona in the evenings, giving percussion lessons on Wednesdays, and substitute teaching at a local elementary school during the weekdays. The subbing job sort of reeled me in, to be fair, as there was a music teacher out for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the school year. But today, I'm teaching a 2nd grade classroom. Second grade, ages 7 and 8. What a delightful age for learning! Knowing me as one of their music teachers, the students start singing a song I taught them when they feel the urge:
My roots go down, down into the earth
My roots go down, down into the earth
My roots go down, down into the earth
My roots go down
In music class, I then had students create their own verses. Often students think of other plants that have roots, but at times they come up with verses that talk about how people are sometimes rooted. Being rooted is a good thing for a person. And so, when students get tired of learning about Venn diagrams, or how to identify facts and questions within a mathematics word problem, we take a break, which I welcome, stand up and stretch, and sing this song about roots that they have come to love.
Like the green trees, ready for their magical autumn transformation, children need roots. As Simone Weil wrote in the mid-20th Century, people need roots but everywhere war and other forces of modern development uproot people through the dissolution of place and community. Children need place and community in its deepest sense. Intergenerational place. Ecological place. But, even when they're not refugees, children are often moved for their parents professional advancement; especially in places like State College, where I live and teach. It is out of the childrens' hand, and they do their best to put down new roots when the ways of life we have chosen to live, the economies we have chosen, uproot them.
Can education stand as a place for roots, in resistance to uprootedness? I don't know. But I hope everyday that I can, in a little way, help these young people root themselves; to find communities and be what and where they are and are meant to be and become. Sustainable beings living in ecosystems and intergenerational communities, responsible for their and humanity's past and future.
DS
Touch, the chill seeps through the ground
Leaves hold green past bush and tree
But deep beneath their roots sense it
Red, orange, yellow, autumn sounds,
Do they know what change will be?
For you, for me?
As a substitute teacher, I teach lots of subjects. As my neighbors aptly point out, though, I'm far too busy teaching my coursework at Penn State Altoona in the evenings, giving percussion lessons on Wednesdays, and substitute teaching at a local elementary school during the weekdays. The subbing job sort of reeled me in, to be fair, as there was a music teacher out for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the school year. But today, I'm teaching a 2nd grade classroom. Second grade, ages 7 and 8. What a delightful age for learning! Knowing me as one of their music teachers, the students start singing a song I taught them when they feel the urge:
My roots go down, down into the earth
My roots go down, down into the earth
My roots go down, down into the earth
My roots go down
In music class, I then had students create their own verses. Often students think of other plants that have roots, but at times they come up with verses that talk about how people are sometimes rooted. Being rooted is a good thing for a person. And so, when students get tired of learning about Venn diagrams, or how to identify facts and questions within a mathematics word problem, we take a break, which I welcome, stand up and stretch, and sing this song about roots that they have come to love.
Like the green trees, ready for their magical autumn transformation, children need roots. As Simone Weil wrote in the mid-20th Century, people need roots but everywhere war and other forces of modern development uproot people through the dissolution of place and community. Children need place and community in its deepest sense. Intergenerational place. Ecological place. But, even when they're not refugees, children are often moved for their parents professional advancement; especially in places like State College, where I live and teach. It is out of the childrens' hand, and they do their best to put down new roots when the ways of life we have chosen to live, the economies we have chosen, uproot them.
Can education stand as a place for roots, in resistance to uprootedness? I don't know. But I hope everyday that I can, in a little way, help these young people root themselves; to find communities and be what and where they are and are meant to be and become. Sustainable beings living in ecosystems and intergenerational communities, responsible for their and humanity's past and future.
DS
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